More than 50 disability rights advocacy groups and Texas nonprofits have banded together to try to mobilize the state’s more than 3 million disabled residents to vote on Nov. 4.

The groups have created a website promoting a Texas Disability Issues Forum, which will be held in Austin next week.

So far, only Democratic hopefuls seeking the top three statewide offices on the fall ballot have agreed to appear at the Sept. 24 event.

GOP nominees for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general — Attorney General Greg Abbott and state Sens. Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton, respectively — have declining the invitation, citing scheduling conflicts, said event organizer Bob Kafka of ADAPT of Texas.

“We can’t force them to come,” he said at a Capitol news conference.

Organizers, though, have offered to let the let candidates citing schedule conflicts to participate using videoconferencing technology, Kafka said. Organizers also told the GOP candidates’ campaigns that they would let the absentee candidates tape an appearance at an earlier date, he said. Forum moderator Ben Philpott, a political reporter with Austin’s public radio station KUT-FM, would interview them “under the same type of setting,” Kafka said.

“We’re disappointed,” he said, noting the forum is a nonpartisan effort.

Abbott, who has been confined to a wheelchair since a tree fell on him about 30 years ago, did join Democrats Wendy Davis, Leticia Van de Putte and Sam Houston in filling out an 18-question issues survey. The four candidates’ responses are posted online here.

Abbott has vigorously defended the state against lawsuits brought by disabled Texans under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. He also has supported the state’s voter ID law, which Kafka said poses problems for disabled people, who he said tend to have lower incomes and be less well educated.

Last week, Abbott unveiled a health platform last week that included support for 5 percent pay raises for personal attendants who help the disabled stay in their homes. State health and human services agencies run so-called “Medicaid waiver” programs that help the disabled remain in the community. They agencies have asked lawmakers next session to approve the additional $105 million in state spending that it would take to grant 5 percent raises. The attendants typically earn $7.50 an hour, or just a quarter more than the federal minimum wage.

Gov. Rick Perry exits an Austin public library after casting his vote early in a Nov. 5 constitutional election

Gov. Rick Perry walked up to a polling station Wednesday with his driver’s license in hand and cast his ballot without a hitch, despite what many are calling a burdensome new voter ID law.

“I gave them my driver’s license and it went as advertised,” Perry told reporters outside the Austin public library where he voted.

Perry said the number of Texans early voting in this constitutional election far exceeds the number that turned out at a comparable 2011 election. That statement comes as Texans grapple with a new voter ID law that many Democrats decry as an obstacle for voters, particularly the poor, young, women and those living in rural areas.

Further, any voter with a name on their ID that doesn’t match exactly with their name in the voter registration database must sign an affidavit.

As Tom Benning reported here, about 15 percent of Dallas County voters have had to sign an affidavit because the names on their documents didn’t match. But nobody had been denied the right to vote, he reported.

Perry said the need to sign an affidavit is the result of piece of legislation Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, wrote. “As far as I know this wasn’t an issue until the legislature made it an issue this session,” Perry said.

Davis, who is running for governor, authored the amendment to the 2011 voter ID law to ensure people with similar, but not exactly corresponding, names on their ID and the voter registration database would be allowed to vote after signing an affidavit.

Davis herself signed an affidavit.

While the number of people voting early in this constitutional election is high, that doesn’t say much. Less than three percent of Texas’ registered voters have cast a ballot so far, according to numbers on the Secretary of State’s website. All said and done, a 10 percent turnout on Nov. 5 would be relatively impressive.

Two days of early voting for Tuesday’s GOP runoff election in urban counties of Texas has yielded more than twice as many votes as it did last spring.

The runoff’s early-vote period, which ends Friday, is just five days — less than half the length of the May 14-May 25 early voting window that preceded the May 29 primary. So to get an early vote equal to that cast in the primary, you have to have participation that’s more than twice as heavy.

But many have predicted a steep drop-off in voter participation in the runoff. So far, that’s not borne out.

Figures released by Texas Secretary of State Hope Andrade’s office on Wednesday — and crunched by The Dallas Morning News to get comparables — show that in the 10 counties with the most registered votes, 31,622 votes were cast on Monday; and on Tuesday, 36,255.

Rewinding the videotape and getting out our calculator, we see that the comparable numbers for the 10 counties were 15,228 and 15,301, respectively, on May 14 and May 15. (Andrade released data for the top 15 counties in May but is putting out only the top 10 for the runoff, said spokesman Rich Parsons.)

In North Texas, the Dallas County Republican early vote is running closer to triple the May rate. While 1,604 cast GOP ballots on May 14 and 1,752 on May 15, the totals on the first two days of this week were 4,507 and 4,935. In Collin County, 3,266 people cast GOP votes on Monday, compared with 1,597 on the inaugural day of pre-primary early vote. On Tuesday, Collin yielded 3,776 GOP votes, vs. 1,669 on the second day back in May.

It’s a small sample size, but the numbers may surprise some folks. I wouldn’t dare to venture a guess as to who it helps in the U.S. Senate battle between Ted Cruz and David Dewhurst, though the conventional wisdom is that higher turnout helps Dewhurst because it “dilutes the tea” with voters who tilt more to the Texas conservative business establishment. But Cruz has made this a race and there’s nothing to say the healthy early vote numbers don’t reflect the zeal of his volunteer-staffed phone banks and energized supporters.

That’s why, if you don’t mind, we’ll just go ahead and have the election. Put the crystal balls away, thank you.